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		<h1>Documentation</h1>
		<p><h4></>Users:</h4>
<ol>
<li>Travel Agents: These are the users who wish to want to know of other travel agents and potential tourists, their budget, likings and prepare their tours accordingly.</li>
<li>Tourists: who wish to know about different travel agents and other tourists. Compare and analyse different travel agents, plan their tours.</li>
<li>Travel Journalists: These people would be the biggest asset for the site. Their reviews, blogs, information and micro-blogs would a measure of how good a travel agent and a touring place is.</li>
<li>Non Tourists/Non Travel Agents: who wish to know more about the tourists, may be find their friends and family and know more on how their tour is going on.</li></ol>
</p>

<p>
<u>Thoughts on the content</u>:<br/>
The content would primarily be uploaded by the travel agents, about the different touring places. Apart from these the users would have facility to upload their profiles and personal data such as events and tour diaries.
</p><p>
<h4>Exercise 1a (Basics of the Service)</h4>
<p>
<i>What will people learn in this community?</i><br/><br/>The site is basically for tourists and travel agents. Tourists would love to compare, rate and analyse different travel agents. The travel agents on the other hand can know about other travel agents and look for possible tie-ups. Travel Agents can also locate and attract future tourists.<br/><br/>
<i>What do you want people to say about your service after a visit?</i><br/><br/>Know about different travel agents and plan your future tours in best possible ways.<br/><br/>
<i>What are the relevant distinct user classes?</i><br/><br/> See above.<br/><br/>
<i>What should a user on a mobile phone be able to do?</i><br/><br/>Is it productive to mix voice and text interaction? It would be great if a user could get information about different travel agents while they are on the move. Voice activated search for a particular travel agent would be a great feature.
</p>
</p>
<p>
<h4>Exercise 1b (Build User Profile Pages)</h4>
<p>The following are the fictitious profiles of the site:
	<ul>
		<li><a href="http://web8.cs.ait.ac.th/basics/showProfile?name=userprofile1">Mesinee Sarikanon</a></li>
		<li><a href="http://web8.cs.ait.ac.th/basics/showProfile?name=userprofile2">Amarin Tour Co., Ltd.</a></li>
		<li><a href="http://web8.cs.ait.ac.th/basics/showProfile?name=userprofile3">Baan Tour Co., Ltd.</a></li>
	</ul>
</p>
</p>
<p>
<h4>Exercise 1c (How the users will experience our service)</h4>
<p>A travel agent usually has a number of tours to the local tourist destinations. Also, the agent might have connections/tie-ups with various other travel agents in other parts of the world. With the help of these the agent offers different tour packages. The tie-ups amongst various travel agents here, must have evolved via contacts through their websites, emails, telephones etc. Further, a travel agent at a particular location might  want look for a list of different other agents on the basis of different criteria such as the past record of the agent, the tourists experience with the agent, the facilities provided by the agent and so on. The meat of the project lies with providing this service to the travel agents. The travel agents of the site would be able to quickly connect with the best of the other agents in a particular area.</p>
<p>The tourists and the travel journalist may be interested in the offers availed by different travel agents. They would want to go off on a holiday trip and wish to know the best agents (matching different criteria), who could arrange the trip for them. The site would be helpful in such case.</p>
</p>
<p><h4>Exercise 2 (Offline Alternatives)</h4>
<p>
There are some offline alternatives of travel community and information. The one way is travel exhibition / fair. There are many travel exhibitions in the world to introduce items such as special promotions and discounts and also to announce their company to the travelers. It has benefit to both of travel agency and travelers. The other one is offline travel guide application in mobile phone such as &quot;Offline Travel Guide & Utilities&quot; application in iPhone/Smart Phones.</p>

<p>However, the offline community can connected by local people only. How great would it be, if people in the world can communicated by online. By providing a forum, members can share information to the others.</p>

</p>
<p><h4>Exercise 3 (Online Alternatives)</h4><p>
There seem to be a few online communities which are offering this service since 2005. Few of the sites we have studied as case studies are :
<ol><li><a href = "http://www.driftr.com">Driftr</a></li>
<li><a href = "http://www.triphub.com">TripHub</a></li>
<li><a href = "http://www.mytravelnetwork.com">My Travel Network</a></li>
<li><a href = "http://www.smallfishbigocean.com">SmallFishBigOcean</a></li>
</ol>
</p>
</p>
<p>
These sites offer a wealth of information about tourist but very less on the travel agents. Our site would be targeting this area mainly.
</p>
</p>
<p>
<h4>Exercise 4 (Magnet Content Identification)</h4>
<p>
The main initial magnet content will be the Travel Agents profiles, the different tours offered by them. These would attract other Travel Agents for a possible tie up. The main initial magnet content will be the travel offers by different agents. Here is an initial list:</p>
<p>
<ol>
<li>Five-star week in Egypt, from &pound;589 - This offer is for seven nights at the five-star Renaissance Golden View Hotel in Sharm El Sheik on a B&B basis, and includes return flights and private resort transfers. Available for travel on 8 October from London Luton or 11 October from Manchester. Based on two sharing. <a href="http://www.sovereign.com">sovereign.com</a>.</li>
<li>Dublin hostel from &euro;14 (&pound;12) a night - Avalon House city-centre hostel in Dublin is offering a 20% discount off the usual room rate of &euro;18 a night for groups of 10 or more until the end of Sept. <a href="http://groupaccommodation.com">groupaccommodation.com</a> +44 (0)1874 611851 </li><li>China Vacation Package Depart From Shanghai, Book Online! Voted #1 Travel Agency In China</li>
</ol>
<p>
We have emailed to a few of the above Travel agents and have asked them for their view on sharing their tour ranges with us. We are really motivated by a few responses. Hence, we think the magnet content for the site could be built.
</p>
</p>
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<p>
<p><h4>Exercise 5 (DNS Service)</h4></p>
<p>
Our proposed travel agent community is a global one. Hence, the most appropriate domain for this would be a .com domain.</p> 
<p>
For the domain name registration and web hosting service, we have to find web hosting provider which offer Linux web hosting, Ruby on Rails and PostgreSQL support, as we have chosen them as our working platform. Initially, we would like to find web hosting provider in Thailand and as we go on find the alternatives and better options.</p><p>
We found one such plans by <a href="http://www.mochahost.com/webhosting.php">MochaHost</a> very interesting. As per the plan, web hosting costs US $4.25 per month with 6 months FREE, domain registration 2 years FREE. In addition, they offer unlimited disk space.
</p>
<p>Our proposed domain names is: www.tourismcomm.com </p>
</p>
<p><h4>Exercise 6 (Intellectual Property Rights)</h4></p><p>
All contributors will maintain the copyright to their material. All contributors to the software running the site should agree to a GNU license.
</p>
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